


Vigil

by severinne



Category: Sherlock (BBC)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:10:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>he cast anonymity upon his face, his body, and if there was always the flicker of disappointment when John's eye slid past him, time and time again...</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil

**Author's Note:**

> Written for picfor1000's Challenge #10; my picture prompt is [here](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sainthuck/6341001273/lightbox/).
> 
> Note: Takes place after and assumes knowledge of 2x03 - The Reichenbach Fall.

_You owe me this,_ he had coldly insisted, unmoved when Mycroft had merely pressed his lips tight and nodded his consent. 

He sensed Mycroft’s eye upon him as the last hitman was stuffed into a bodybag and dragged away, waiting for Sherlock to ask the question best left unanswered. If he had known which of these three had trained his gun on John that day, he never would have been satisfied with watching from a sedan’s backseat. 

‘All better?’ Mycroft asked dryly. 

‘It’s a start.’ He would need Mycroft’s wealth as well as his secret service for the work to come now his livelihood was bled dry. And since his livelihood had become John’s as well…

‘A pension for the war widow?’

‘Just see that it’s done.’ Shoving oversized aviators over his face, Sherlock turned up the collar of a powder blue suit and spilled out of the car. 

Mycroft’s smirking aside, Mrs. Hudson was paid handsomely to keep 221B for John’s indefinite use, causing much bewilderment when John resurfaced endless weeks later. Watching from the window of a neighbouring flat recently vacated of one dead assassin, Sherlock waited anxiously for gratitude but John entered with tired resignation in his slight limp. John’s pension hadn’t been enough before and left him little choice but to return to their flat – stripped, mercifully he thought, of Sherlock’s possessions but with Moriarty’s cameras intact.

It had seemed a shame to waste such convenience.

John favoured a military neatness, but Sherlock took immediate offense to the lifeless interior revealed by the grayscale feed on his laptop. Mrs. Hudson had left the furniture but there was no skull, no violin… just John.

And his service revolver.

That was the hardest test, to watch helplessly with his mobile in hand, thumb poised if John dared do more than stare at the gun cradled in his lap. _I’m not dead,_ he typed urgently. For levity: _Let’s have dinner. S._ A single finger curled around that trigger and he would send that and end this.

He was disappointed that John never gave him the excuse.

Lestrade won the privilege of breaking John’s solitude, armed with far too much take-away curry that John ate with dogged determination, one reluctant bite after another. A few cans, however, yielded up a hesitant smile, then another that set off an unpleasant flutter in Sherlock’s hollow stomach. 

He scrutinized Lestrade’s painfully obvious posture, held his breath at the hand clasping John’s woolen shoulder and exhaled shakily as John stiffened and took a step back, the _No_ on his lips precisely shaped even on the grainy image.

He didn’t draw another breath until Lestrade was gone, leaving John the sole occupant of Sherlock’s lens. All was well, until John stopped pacing, collapsed across the settee and slid a tentative hand down his trousers.

Sherlock slammed the laptop shut and walked away.

Watching John was not enough, he reminded himself sternly. Moriarty’s legacy remained largely unknown, unpredictable. He snatched up a bulky anorak and flew into the night.

He returned two days later with another name for Mycroft and a nagging irritation for his cowardice. Steeling his nerves, he opened his laptop and promptly relaxed at the perfectly bland image of John watching telly, boredom etched deep around his mouth. 

‘That’s another down,’ he started proudly, sending a quick text to Mycroft. John didn’t reply, as familiar as when he would disappear to the shops only far better when kept safely in the window beneath his web browser. Energized by a successful hunt, Sherlock added the name to his database and promptly chased its connecting thread in Moriarty’s unraveling web.

‘Must be the supplier,’ he murmured, flicking his eye down to John. ‘The explosives were… _oh_.’

He swallowed tightly, fingers mute above the keyboard. 

He _could_ watch this. It had no meaning. There was nothing sacred or enigmatic in the strong fingers stroking a cock sprung free from loosened pajama bottoms. John’s thighs strained against the striped cotton, struggling to spread wider apart, hips bucking up from the armchair, head snapping back and lips gasping wide…

And there was the breathless enigma, _there_ in the raw vulnerability of John’s lips as he spent himself all over his hand. And again, in the disgust crumpling his echoing pleasure before Sherlock could fully untangle its complexities and tuck each thread of him away somewhere safe.

Once the shuddering curl of John’s body on the floor had gentled into sleep, Sherlock painstakingly wiped the fingerprints from his screen before closing the laptop.

The settee on which he slept was heaped with the identities he needed to move beyond this flat – uniforms, second-hand rags, hats to conceal his curls with nary a deerstalker in sight. Mycroft had drawn the line at granting access to the CCTV network that could have kept John forever in sight; instead, he cast anonymity upon his face, his body, and if there was always the flicker of disappointment when John’s eye slid past him, time and time again…

Loneliness clung close to John these days, tighter than the unflattering clothes he wore. Sherlock observed it every time he shadowed John to disreputable pubs where he drank deeply in unmolested misery amongst hormonal morons who failed to detect the soldier’s lust for danger lurking behind a doctor’s kindness.

In those places, disguise and darkness might be enough. Sherlock would slick down his hair, wear leather trousers two sizes too small and keep his face to the wall while John peeled them down his hips in some dirty storeroom. He would swallow his voice, hold tongue and breath and hope for John to gasp his name into the back of his neck as he came.

It could be the last word Sherlock would hear. His name could summon a bullet from the heart of a London that never did John Watson any harm until he fell into Sherlock’s life.

He curled beneath his bed of skins and closed his eyes: a mask, once more, for now.


End file.
